And no, it’s not that the stuff requires rare and exotic ingredients, or takes an especially skilful and labourious process to create, or even that there had to be a huge up-front investment of years of research and development to come up with it. The system is just so utterly fucked, and seemingly geared toward everything but providing people with healthcare with any kind of efficiency.

The cost of making the antivenom, including research, development, animal care and plasma harvesting… A mere 0.1 percent [of the ultimate expense]. 70.1 percent… was due to hospital markups used in negotiations with insurance companies. [emphasis mine]

Jesus fuck. It’s not actually fair to blame this all on IP, that’s just my hobby-horse. This goes deeper in terrifying and unfathomable ways.